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Recent cases of partisan-motivated prorogations of parliaments at the federal and provincial levels in Canada have focused attention on this phenomenon. While such prorogations are uncommon in the mature Westminster-style parliaments, the Canadian cases are not unique. Systematic study of partisan-motivated prorogations in the Australian states has illuminated the factors commonly associated with such cases. This paper outlines the results of this literature and then tests whether the Canadian cases fit the pattern. It shows that, on balance, these factors do apply. The paper thus concludes that, while partisan-motivated prorogations may not be predictable, it is possible to identify circumstances in which there is a substantially greater risk of their occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canadian Muslim women, as opposed to their Australian counterparts, have attained prominent social status not only in terms of their contribution to electoral politics but also in other political spheres. With its focus on the Sharia debate, this paper investigates one potential explanation for this difference. Challenging Okin's feminist perspective, which claims that multiculturalism is an undesirable policy for emancipation, it is argued that multiculturalism facilitates agency of female members of Muslim communities. A comparative examination of the Sharia debate between the two secular countries of Canada and Australia demonstrates that the former's more robust multicultural polity in terms of responding to requests to adopt the Sharia have not only culminated in Muslim women's empowerment but have enhanced their political representation. In contrast, Australian Muslim women have neither had the opportunity to articulate their position with regard to Sharia nor to contribute to an important issue that could have empowered them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the extent to which party law influences the internal organisation of parties in four Commonwealth common law states: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The research engages with recent comparative party literature that emphasises the increasingly close relationship between political parties and the state, in particular the cartel party thesis. My findings indicate that over the last few decades parties have become subject to greater legal regulation, which supports the claim that parties are now managed more closely by the state. However, it is important to distinguish between legislative and common law (judicial) regulation, as each has a different impact on the organisational autonomy of the cartel party. I argue that parties (as autonomous actors and the authors of parliamentary decrees) have been able to shape legislative regulation to their advantage by eliciting significant financial support from the state, yet minimising the corresponding degree of legislative intrusion into their internal activities. However, cartel parties have not been able to prevent judicial scrutiny of their internal workings, and have lost a significant degree of organisational independence as principles of administrative law (usually reserved for state bodies) are being increasingly applied to their structure and behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the insights of Sawer and Laycock (2009) to explore similarities in the use of populist discourse by former Australian Prime John Howard and current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While Sawer and Laycock label this discourse ‘market populism’ and focus on economic issues, here it is argued that Howard and Harper's populism is better understood as ‘mainstream populism’ due to the equal importance of sociocultural issues in their discourses. To demonstrate this, the treatment of issues such as immigration, multiculturalism, the culture wars, criminal justice, and childcare is considered. It is further suggested that such populist policies were used to satisfy rival wings of their respective parties – neoliberals and social conservatives – that do not always share the same priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conventional wisdom has been that the Canadian Citizenship Act and the British Nationality and Australian Citizenship Act demonstrated the growth of a local nationalism after the Second World War. In reality, the situation was more complicated. Both English-speaking Canada and Australia still regarded themselves as British nations. The passage of the Canadian Act was an illustration of the bicultural nature of that country, which developments during the war had brought to the fore. The Australian Act was simply a reaction to the Canadian Act, as the latter had undermined the common code of British subject status across the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the British Nationality Act was primarily an attempt to preserve the common status of British subjects throughout the Commonwealth and maintain the integrity of this organisation during a period when it was being rapidly transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a rich comparative literature on Australian and Canadian politics but relatively little comparing political discourse, despite the election in both countries of governments promising to 'govern for the mainstream'. This article presents a comparative analysis of market populist discourse as articulated by the Howard and Harper governments, using a conceptualisation of market populism that draws on work by Thomas Frank. The article examines the origins and vectors of this discourse, its adaptation to local circumstances and the way it mobilises resentment against so-called 'elites' and 'special interests' associated with the welfare state and with the intermediary institutions of representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this study is to assess the psychological effects of the voting systems on the substantive representation of women. The central hypothesis is that voting systems influence the perception that female politicians have of their role as political representatives of women and, in particular, that women elected by PR systems are more likely than those elected by majority systems to feel they have a responsibility to represent women. Interviews conducted with 110 female MPs in Australia, Canada and New Zealand between 2001 and 2004-5 do not support this assumption. The conclusion explores how the concept of surrogate representation may improve our understanding of the psychological effects of the voting system on the substantive representation of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent comparative studies find Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to be among world leaders in tobacco control, but the explanations differ. Are cultural or institutional factors, especially federalism, more important in making these three English-speaking countries among the strongest tobacco-control regimes in the world? This study employs data on policy instruments that have been commonly used in tobacco control policy. Paradoxically, the federation that is more fiscally centralised, Australia, has had the most decentralised process of tobacco control, which has allowed it to initiate new policies earlier. Through similar underlying 'secular morality' values of public health promotion and diffusion, both within and across countries, similar outcomes are achieved through different institutional processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a ‘most-similar-systems’ design, several major theories of welfare state development are shown to have some weaknesses in comparing the Australian and Canadian welfare states during the Golden Age. I offer instead a party competition theory, with the degree of party system polarisation as a key variable. Located in a highly polarised party system, the Australian Liberals adopted a directional social policy strategy and further shifted the Australian welfare state in favour of the middle class. Located in a less polarised party system, the Canadian Liberals adopted a more proximity-based brokerage strategy of social policy and co-opted the left's popular social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]